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In London, a New Wave of Greek Restaurants Goes Beyond the Taverna

A new wave of modern, elevated Greek restaurants is trading blue-and-white clichés for regional cooking, thoughtful sourcing and contemporary dining rooms.

Souvlaki, tzatziki, saganaki—these are just a few of the dishes that have landed on London’s menus over the past year, evidence of an influx of modern, elevated Greek restaurants arriving in the British capital. While London has always had a plethora of dining options, including both casual and more high-end Greek restaurants, in recent months, there has been an unexpected and unprecedented surge of new openings. It’s making a case for more than just a trend, with chefs and restaurateurs showcasing the scope of the regional cuisine in refined, sometimes experimental ways, in the hope that these restaurants will become permanent fixtures. 

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“The last real trend was cooking with fire, and before that it was Asian food,” says Louis Korovilas, head chef at Clio, a stylish, contemporary Greek restaurant on Chiltern Street in Marylebone, which opened in April. “It’s Greece’s time in the sun.” Korovilas opines that in the past, people have viewed Greek food as “the ugly duckling of Mediterranean food.” Now, however, he’s noticing people looking at Greek cuisine through a “different lens.”

To be clear, there have been Greek restaurants in London for decades. Elysée opened as a French eatery in 1936, but after it was purchased by George, Michael and Ulysses Karageorgis in 1962, it was transformed into a memorable Greek spot. It’s evolved to keep up with the times, now embracing a modern, upscale vibe suited to Mayfair, but has always attracted well-to-do diners, including figures like Prince Philip and Muhammad Ali. 

More casual restaurants, like Halepi and Andy’s Taverna, have also been around since the 1960s. The 2010s brought in a few more, including Mazi, in Notting Hill, in 2012. But for many years, the number of Greek restaurants paled in comparison to the plethora of Italian, Indian and Lebanese eateries around London. When Christina Mouratoglou co-founded Mazi with her husband and business partner, Adrien Carré, she says the “Greek food scene didn’t exist at all.” While that is not entirely true, it’s fair to say that that type of elevated offering was certainly rare.

“I didn’t have a restaurant background before, but I was always into food and obsessed with food,” says Mouratoglou, who grew up in Thessaloniki. “I wanted to show people what really good Greek food is. And what it is and what it’s not, because there were a lot of misconceptions at the time.”

She describes the Greek restaurant scene in London at the time as “very basic.” “It was mainly Cypriot-focused because there were a lot of Cypriot immigrants that came here in the ‘60s,” Mouratoglou says, referencing the vast number of people from Cyprus who moved to the U.K. before the country gained independence from Britain in 1960. “They had their........

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